Visit to archaeological dig on Holy Island

29th September 2025

The children from both schools were able to visit the Lindisfarne Dig and talk to the archaeologists working there about what they have found out.  Firstly, we walked to the Heugh to visit the watchtower where we used compasses to work out what we could see in each direction. We sketched what we saw and labelled each sketch with the direction; north, south, east or west, north-east, south-east etc and some of us detailed the number of degrees shown on the compass. We then found a south facing viewpoint outside and used the compass again to check the direction or the degrees.

Next, we visited Nat, one of the archaeologists working at the Dig Ventures site on Holy Island. The children asked numerous questions about how archaeologists find out about the past. They were interested in how they knew where to dig, why they were digging there, what tools they used and how they could tell how old things are. They then asked about what had been found and were very interested to see some artefacts (bone, teeth, pieces of iron, shells etc) that had just been discovered. 

We went into the village hall to see how the finds were cleaned & categorised. Nat had picked out some interesting items including Anglo Saxon name stones, coins, an iron pin and the remains of a bird which is now extinct.  Nat told us that pieces of worked flint have been found on the island which tells us that people lived in that place during the stone age!